Hawaii Wave Surfing

The art of wave riding (‘he'enalu’, in old Hawaiian) was practiced in many coastal locations around the tropics among Pacific Islanders. "He'e" means to go from a solid to a liquid and "nalu" means surfing motion of a wave. This stand-up pastime of surfing came to its climax in Hawaii not only because of its coast having warm water and constant waves but Hawaiians are innately ocean people. Traditionally surfing prowess gained you social rank and power politically in the village. Commoners could only raise their social standing by proving their skills and bravery in the waves on the lower-grade boards they surfed with. The man who was the finest surfer became the Ali’i (royal) of the tribe and so was given a surfboard made from the finest tree. There were surf chants, board making rituals and other native sacred acts. ‘’Hawaiians sang and chanted legendary stories of love matches made and broken in the surf, of lives risked and of heroic ocean deeds by chiefs at the peak of the Sport of Kings’’ (Marcus, 2007)..
The first Polynesians lived on their homeland of island chains in isolation for almost 1,300 years, before
As Russell (2015) says it’s all about seeing the raw power of nature, time ceases and you empty yourself out into the ocean, you find a sense of self and spirit. It’s the passion they have for the ocean and being a part of the wave, it’s the ‘’elation of gliding across the face of a wave, the euphoria of passing under the lip of a spitting wave, the breathlessness of a long ride’’ (Booth, 2008). It’s as Evers (2006 cited in Booth, 2008) says the aftermath of surfing is what aficionados call ‘stoke’, a feeling of satisfaction and pride that has come to life - that gives us that the natural high when riding a wave. It is this feeling of being bonded to the ‘stoke’ that lived in the Polynesians and that is chased by every surfer